Closer To Home Read online

  Hollis was interrupted by the appearance of the café owner. She smiled at them both and pulled out a chair opposite Kate.

  ‘Bloody hot in there,’ she said, untying the red bandanna she was wearing to keep her unruly dark curls in check and wiping her face with it. ‘School holidays are great for my bank balance but not so good for anything else.’

  Kate felt immediately drawn to her open manner. She was probably about the same age as Hollis and very pretty. Her dark hair and deep brown eyes suggested Mediterranean heritage and she had the poise and measured movements of a dancer.

  ‘You wanted to ask me something about yesterday?’

  Hollis took out his notebook and flipped back a few pages.

  ‘We just need to confirm the details of a statement we were given earlier.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You know Sara Evans? She’s a friend of yours?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘She comes in a lot. Has done for a couple of years.’

  ‘So, you know her as a customer?’ Kate asked.

  ‘At first. She’s a photographer. Outdoorsy stuff mostly but she did some shots of my nephew’s picnic, here in the park.’

  ‘So, she did some work for your family?’

  The woman nodded. ‘My brother wanted some proper photos of Lewis, his son. He… er… he has leukaemia. We wanted some memories of him while he was healthy. Sara did a brilliant job.’

  Hollis nodded and seemed reluctant to continue so Kate stepped in.

  ‘And you’re friends now?’

  Sally nodded, the action sending tsunami-like waves through her hair.

  ‘Did you see her on Tuesday morning?’

  ‘She came in for breakfast, a couple of days ago. Late breakfast.’ Her serious expression turned suddenly lewd and Kate half expected her to add nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

  ‘She’s got a new boyfriend. Dave something. I think she wanted to show him off. Seemed like a nice man.’

  ‘And they were both in here on Tuesday?’

  ‘Yep. Came in around eleven. I was teasing Sara about the time and how she needed a full breakfast to keep her energy levels up.’

  ‘What time did they leave?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe half an hour or forty-five minutes later. He came inside to pay and I told him to say goodbye to her from me.’

  Hollis closed his notebook with a snap.

  Nothing more to add.

  12

  2015

  Kate’s phone rang as they were pulling into the car park at Doncaster Central.

  ‘Where are you two?’ Raymond barked as soon as she tapped the screen.

  ‘Car park. On the way up now.’

  ‘Well get a bloody move on. We’ve got another one.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Missing kiddy. From Thorpe.’

  She gave Hollis an account of the phone call as they jogged upstairs to the incident room. Stunned faces turned to the door as they entered, like sunflowers following the light. Kate felt like she was back at school again and she’d walked in late to an exam. On the whiteboard was an image of a boy who looked to be about four or five years old. It was a school photograph – pale yellow polo shirt with a logo, neatly parted hair and a grin that revealed a gap in his front teeth.

  Raymond had obviously been in the middle of his narrative. He pointed to two empty seats and Kate and Hollis obediently slipped into them.

  ‘Okay. For our new arrivals,’ his voice dripped sarcasm. ‘This is four-year-old Callum Goodwin. Last seen playing on his scooter on the street in front of his parents’ house on Aspen Grove this afternoon. Mum was in the garden – went inside to get a drink – came out and little Callum was gone.’

  ‘Where was his scooter?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘Also gone. What we know so far is bugger all. Uniforms have been canvassing the area but nobody saw anything.’ Raymond’s tone suggested that he thought the uniformed officers’ incompetent.

  ‘Is there a link with Aleah Reese?’ Kate wanted to know.

  ‘That.’ Raymond’s voice boomed, ‘is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. The family live two streets away from the Reeses, in a square.’

  Kate started making notes as she envisaged the area. The ‘square’ was a cul-de-sac – a short road surrounded by eight or ten semis.

  ‘How come nobody saw anything? It’s like a goldfish bowl down there.’

  Raymond glanced down, consulting his notes.

  ‘Most of the neighbours were at work. A couple were out shopping.’

  ‘But the place must be crawling with marked cars. What sort of person snatches a kid from under our noses?’ Kate couldn’t make sense of the arrogance it would take to do something like that.

  ‘A bloody clever one,’ Raymond snapped. ‘Or just lucky.’

  ‘Do the family know the Reeses?’

  ‘Everybody knows everybody on that estate.’

  ‘But there’s no connection? No family link? Work? Nothing?’

  ‘Not so far. It looks like this and the taking of the Reese girl might be random. Opportunistic. We need to get digging. If there is a connection between these two then we need to find it. Fast. If there isn’t a link then we need to be extra thorough. If this is a nutter with a thing for kids we might have another body on our hands.’ Raymond paused, surveying the grim faces in the room before focussing on Kate. ‘Fletcher – in my office!’

  The DCI stormed out. Kate followed him into his office and closed the door behind her as he marched to the seat behind his desk and flopped down as though he was exhausted. A vague wave in the direction of the other vacant seat invited Kate to sit opposite him.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘Two kids from the same estate.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Too much of a coincidence.’

  He pulled a file out of a drawer in the desk and pushed it over to her.

  ‘We’ve got more details from Aleah Reese’s PM. Nothing to contradict what we were first told. Manual strangulation. No prints, no useful trace evidence, no sign of sexual assault. But, she’d been held somewhere after she died. There are some marks which suggest perhaps the floor of a van. Livor shows some odd lines as though she was left on a ridged surface like the metal floor in a delivery vehicle. She’d eaten some type of breakfast cereal with nuts and it hadn’t had time to digest, suggesting that she was killed soon after she was snatched. Kailisa puts it at somewhere between midday and four that afternoon. He doesn’t think that she was held anywhere for any length of time – even if she was terrified the stomach contents would have been more degraded.’

  He pulled the file back towards him as though he’d changed his mind about sharing the information with Kate.

  ‘And there’s this.’

  He pulled out a photograph and slid it across the desk towards her. It showed an image of Aleah’s head and neck. Nestled in the hollow between her clavicles was a gold pendant, the chain snaked back around her neck and looked like it was stuck to her damp flesh. Kate bit down hard on the sorrow that threatened to engulf her.

  ‘Have you got a close-up?’ she managed to ask.

  Raymond slid her another photograph.

  ‘It looks like a letter T.’

  Raymond grunted his agreement. ‘I had Cooper Google it. It could be a letter T or it could be a Tau cross, a particular type of Christian cross without the top bit.’

  Kate considered his statement.

  ‘The cross makes more sense. Why would a kid wear a pendant with a letter that isn’t part of her own name? Are the family religious?’

  Raymond shook his head. ‘That’s the thing, Fletcher. It isn’t her necklace. Barratt rang to check. They had no idea what he was talking about.’

  ‘Shit,’ Kate said. ‘This isn’t random, is it? Somebody targeted Aleah Reese for a specific reason? Maybe some religious nutter who wanted to use this to brand his kill?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Raymond said. ‘Nutter of one flavou
r or another. Which makes it all the more important that we find out what’s happened to Callum Goodwin. I’m not ruling out Craig Reese. Aleah might just have been him getting started and now he’s moving on. I need you to share this with your team.’ He slid the folder across the desk and Kate understood what he was saying. This was her case now. Raymond had seen enough of her work to allow her to run her own investigation. As senior investigating officer, he’d still have an overview but the hour-to-hour decisions and actions of her team were down to her. This was what she’d moved for; this was what her promotion had been about.

  She stood up, clutching the folder to her chest and turned to leave.

  ‘And Fletcher?’

  She turned to see Raymond scowling up at her.

  ‘I’ll be watching. Don’t fuck this up.’

  Hollis grinned at her as she threw the folder down onto her desk.

  ‘Bollocking?’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘Just the opposite. I need to get the others up to speed. A hand?’

  She sent Hollis to the scanner with the photographs and quickly read through the autopsy notes. She’d seen much worse, but the description of such a young life so brutally snuffed out made grim reading. And there was nothing much to move them forward. Time for a brainstorming session.

  The other detectives looked apprehensive as she turned to address them in the meeting room and she was sure that Barratt glanced over her shoulder to see if Raymond was following her through the door. They were all there, her team, all three of them – and O’Connor. Hollis smiled encouragingly but she sensed that he was anxious for her and, not for the first time, she was glad that he had her back.

  She picked up the remote for the projector and it came on with a beep. A quick swipe of her finger across the track pad of the laptop and the first of the new PM photos was displayed on the whiteboard. Kate turned to check that it was clear and then back to the four expectant faces.

  ‘Right. Raymond has handed the day-to-day of this investigation over to me. He’ll still have oversight but this is now my case, which means that it’s our case.’

  A surprised exhalation from O’Connor.

  ‘I know that I’ve not been here for very long but I’m not an outsider. I was born in Thorpe, two streets away from where the Reeses live. I grew up there. I knew the village and I still know some of the people there. But you know the area now, not in the past.’

  Nods of approval from O’Connor, Cooper and Hollis.

  ‘We’ve got the full PM report on Aleah Reese.’ She pointed to the image behind her, a close-up of the dead girl’s face, slack and inanimate as though she was in a deep sleep.

  ‘Something’s come up that we need to think about. I don’t know what it means and nor does Raymond but one of you might have some ideas.’

  She flicked forward to the photograph showing Aleah’s neck.

  ‘This necklace was found on Aleah’s body. The family say it’s not hers. Cooper thought it could be something called a Tau cross.’

  Cooper flushed at the mention of her name.

  ‘So, if we get a suspect called Tony or Ted we’re sorted,’ Barratt said with a soft chuckle.

  ‘I doubt it’s that simple,’ Kate said. ‘But we can live in hope.’

  ‘Does Raymond think that the Goodwin boy is connected?’ O’Connor asked.

  Kate ignored the implied slight and shrugged, ‘We can’t rule it out. It’s a hell of a coincidence and his disappearance is similar. Kid on his own, nobody saw anything.’

  ‘Despite an obvious police presence on the estate,’ Cooper said. ‘Might suggest that it’s somebody local. Somebody that everybody was used to seeing so they wouldn’t think that his, or her, presence in the area was unusual. Somebody who wouldn’t be noticed?’

  ‘Craig Reese lives just around the corner,’ Barratt said. ‘I still like him for Aleah. He might have taken another one to throw us off. I bet he’s got a decent alibi.’

  ‘His story about Aleah stacks up though,’ Cooper said. ‘It’s obvious from the CCTV that he’s upset when he can’t find her.’

  ‘Or it’s obvious that he knows he’s on CCTV. He could have followed her to the shop, grabbed her and tied her up and then gone back to the bookies.’

  Hollis shook his head.

  ‘So where did he put her when he went back? He couldn’t just leave her in the street.’

  Kate flicked forward on the laptop to another photograph. This one showed the lividity marks on Aleah’s back. Clear vertical stripes as though she had been laid on a ridged surface.

  ‘She was kept somewhere after she died,’ she said. ‘Raymond thought maybe the back of a van with a metal floor. Reese doesn’t have a van. Any other thoughts?’

  Three heads tilted from one side to the other and back again as her team studied the photographs.

  ‘I’d be inclined to agree with the DCI,’ Barratt said and Hollis nodded. ‘But it doesn’t rule out Reese. He may have transport that we know nothing about. He could have borrowed a van.’

  ‘But the time frame doesn’t add up,’ Kate said. ‘He’d have had twenty minutes to grab her, strangle her and dump her in a van. We know that he walked up to the village with Aleah. Where did he kill her? He could hardly do it on Main Street.’

  ‘He could have taken her to the van and killed her there. She’d have gone with him. All he has to do then is rush back to the bookies and look frantic with worry,’ Hollis suggested. Kate thought for a minute. It was possible, just. But was it plausible? Did Craig Reese fit the profile of a child killer? And what was his motive?

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘We should have another look at Reese. He might have borrowed a van from a friend, or have one that’s not registered.’

  ‘Or he might have nicked it,’ Barratt said.

  ‘Okay. So, we’ll have Reese back in and see if he can add anything to his previous statement. What else?’

  ‘I still think that Ken Fowler is either as dodgy as hell or Mister Right-place-right-time,’ Barratt said. ‘And he drives an old Landy. Might be worth a look in the back. If him and Reese alibi each other for Tuesday night then either one of them could be lying. There’s the tent ropes thing as well. I bet our Ken’s a keen camper.’

  ‘Where are we at with Reese’s tent?’ Hollis asked. ‘Have you heard anything?’

  Kate shook her head. It could take a couple of days for forensics to check the tent to see if the guy ropes had been cut or were missing. And then they would have to try to match the ropes found on Aleah’s body to the ones from the tent found in Reese’s shed.

  ‘Cooper, what did you dig up about Paul Hirst’s suicide? Anything useful?’

  Cooper shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

  O’Connor said, ‘I asked around this afternoon. Couldn’t get anybody to talk about him or Jud Reese.’ Kate wasn’t surprised. Getting anybody to talk about events during the strike was next to impossible without a great deal of alcohol.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘We need a list of actions and we need to factor Callum Godwin into the investigation. At the moment, he’s a missing child – and let’s hope he turns up – but, if he doesn’t, we might be looking at two dead children.’

  She studied the faces that were hanging on to her every word. Eager, intelligent and keen for direction.

  ‘So, actions for tomorrow. Barratt – follow up on Fowler. Talk to him, check his alibi and try to get a look in his Land Rover. Cooper – you did excellent work digging into the background of the Reeses so keep digging. And add Callum Goodwin’s parents to your search. There might be a link. And check phone records – find out if Reese contacted anybody who might have a van. And if he had contact with the Goodwins. Hollis, with me. We’ll have a chat with the Goodwins and I want to go back to the first scene.’

  ‘What for?’ Barratt asked. ‘Forensics will have gone over it already.’

  ‘We’re missing something,’ Kate said. ‘Why dump the body there? Aleah wasn’t drowned. S
he could have been left anywhere. This place might mean something to the killer.’

  As she said it, Kate felt that she was right. The choice of site for the body wasn’t random or opportunistic. The whole thing had the feeling of being staged and the necklace tied in perfectly. There was a message there if only they knew how to read it. Whoever had killed Aleah Reese felt that he had some sort of justification. He had a reason. Kate just prayed that he wasn’t on some sort of mission and just getting started.

  ‘Cooper? Who owns that site? Did you find out?’

  Cooper shook her head. ‘I was working on the CCTV and the background checks. I’ll have a look. It should be fairly easy to find.’

  Kate nodded, satisfied. At least they had a plan.

  13

  2015

  Barratt knocked on the door and then took a step back to assess the house that Ken Fowler had given as his address. A new build at the end of a cul-de-sac, it sat in a slightly elevated position and commanded a view of the entrance to the road and most of the other houses. A strip of drying grass ran along one side, flanked by a wooden fence. The attached garage was locked with padlocks and hasps and, above the door, a burglar alarm box indicated that the occupants of the house took their security seriously. Or that they had something worth stealing.

  The latter seemed unlikely. The area was popular with retirees looking to downsize and first-time buyers trying to get a foot on the property ladder. The main entrance road to the estate ran off a dual carriageway which took a back route into Rotherham. On the other side of the main road, connected by a footbridge, was a large Tesco supermarket and a chain pub which advertised pensioners’ specials and two-for-one meal deals. Obviously targeting their local market.

  Barratt knocked again. He hadn’t warned Fowler that he was coming. He believed that the element of surprise was always useful when dealing with a suspect but he was beginning to wonder if he’d had a wasted trip. Just as he was about to leave, the door was suddenly snatched open.

  ‘Christ, what’s your problem? I was in the shower.’ Ken Fowler was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt which revealed bulging biceps as he towelled his head and neck, making a point about being interrupted.